The bathroom door closed. Liz looked into the darkness toward the sound. She moved down the hall to the door. She touched the handle and found it freezing. Something whispered in the dark, incomprehensible words, sounds, noises, she wasn't sure what. All she was sure of was that she hadn't made them.

Whatever had been roaming the house two weeks ago was still here.

Her head told her body to climb back into bed, bury her face against Jack, squeeze her eyes shut until dawn, and spend the night praying. Her body told her mind to go to h.e.l.l. She was at the foot of the stairs. She climbed to the landing and looked up. The second floor was black. Not even outside light filtered in.

What are you doing? her mind asked. Get downstairs and deal with this in the morning.

"I'm not going to be scared out of my own house," she told no one. I've waited too long, suffered through too much s.h.i.t, to get to this point. I've got a good family, a good house, and a good life and I'm not giving it up. "This is my house now," she said. The house responded with a crack of wood overhead.

Liz was on the stairs to the third floor landing, ignorant to everything around her except the noises and the cold. Up here it was even colder.

Her feet were numb from the stairs and her fingers wouldn't grasp the banister right, they were so stiff from cold. She breathed icicles, exhaled mist.

"You're not scaring me out," she said. "This is my house now."

Another crack of wood from the third floor. She stood on the landing, staring up. She'd braved the dark and the cold past the first two floors, but nothing could make her take that last flight to the top. She just stood in the dark, looking up at it, thinking hatred at it, telling it to go away. Below her, she heard music. A piano played light, cheery notes in the main second floor room. She drew in breath and moved down the stairs.

The notes sounded until Liz reached the main room. When they stopped, the silence was worse than the phantom music. At least with the music playing, she might not hear the whispers. And while she didn't hear them now, she knew they were coming, and when they did, with nothing to drown them out, she'd hear them loud and clear.

She rubbed her hands together, flexed her fingers, and popped the knuckles.

What was coming next? The waiting was just as bad as finding out. The antic.i.p.ation, the wonder, the uncertainty.

A child giggled overhead, then someone bounded down the steps, rounded the second floor and the footsteps vanished downstairs. The bathroom door opened, then slammed. The study door closed, quietly with a simple click. The door separating the main room from the dining room swung shut.

Liz stood in the middle of the room. The temperature dropped again. She thought she could feel her blood freezing, it was so cold. And she was in her underwear and a T-shirt. That's when she felt the hands on her legs, dozens of them, caressing her skin, running the length of her calf, her thigh, over the k.n.o.b of her knee. Her hands brushed at them, found nothing, and she stepped away from where she'd been standing. Then the whispers did come.

"You can't save yourself."

"Forgive me--pant, pant--forgive me."

"Everyone will suffer now."

Liz turned around, found a light switch behind her, and flipped it. The room was flooded with dull light. The shadows were gone and so, she hoped, were the hands, the voices. It even seemed warmer now. The circulation was restored and her goose b.u.mps were gone. The house was still.

What am I doing up in the middle of the night?

"I don't know," she answered herself. "But I'm going back to bed right now. And nothing can touch us. This is our house now."

She went downstairs, climbed into bed. Her bravado was a front, she knew it. Under the safety of the sheet, she moved against Jack. He shrugged away from her, sticky with heat and sweat. She burrowed into herself, closed her eyes, and tried to keep the house and the things in it from invading her thoughts before she was able to force herself to sleep.

As she finally slipped away, she thought she heard, faintly, from far away, a piano sounding out single hollow notes.

For the third time, Liz woke up.

Did I dream all that? she wondered. She wiped her eyes clean and rolled her feet onto the floor. Christ, I hope so.

As soon as she hit the living room, Joey asked if they were going to find horses today, and Liz remembered she said they'd keep the car and do something.

"We'll try, Joe," she said on her way to the kitchen. She got coffee and heard Jack coming out of the bathroom. She headed for the hall and the blessed toilet. When her bladder was quiet and she'd brushed her teeth, she felt much better, but she was still wondering about last night.

I got the house blessed. I haven't heard a noise or seen a shadow for weeks. It's supposed to be over. Please tell me I dreamed it.

But she couldn't be sure.

"Do you mind if we take you to work and keep the car today?" she asked.

"How come?"

"No reason. I just thought Joe and I could get out of the house for a day. See the city for a change."

"Okay."

When they'd dropped him off and Jack had reminded her for the fifth time to pick him up, she glanced back at Joey in the mirror and asked, "So what do you wanna do?"

"Let's find the horses."

"Okay," she said. "I guess we drive around until we find horses."

"I know where they are," he said. "I'll tell you where to go."

Liz smiled and said okay, thinking she was going to spend the day driving in circles. But she didn't have any other plans, so circles were fine with her. At least they weren't in the house. And at the least car had air conditioning.

Jack decided he hated Harris Wilde. Harris was the buyer for the western division of Fett Technologies in Boulder, Colorado. Harris called at least three times a week with a rush order of control boxes and cables he needed sent next day air to the plant in Boulder. And Harris wanted all this made extra, in addition to the regular schedule of work already going to Colorado. But Harris never called in with his "emergency order" until right before lunch, which gave them only three hours to get it filled and shipped in time to make the UPS pick-up.

Jack brought two work orders to the cable cell and gave them to Wanda, the cell leader. He took another three to the box cell.

"These are for next day air to Harris Wilde," he said.

"c.o.c.ksucker," Charley said. "Would it be too much to ask that he pull this c.r.a.p early enough to give us time to actually get it done without rushing?"

"And he's surprised when he gets parts that end up not working and have to be sent back," Jack said.

"Hey," Charley said, "you wanna come over some time this weekend and play?"

"I don't know," Jack said. "Sat.u.r.day?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. I'm sure I can squeeze it into my hectic not-at-work schedule, somewhere between the sitting around and the doing nothing."

"Cool."

"Now I have to call shipping and tell them there's gonna be a last minute next day load."

"Again," Charley said.

"Yep."

Joey directed Liz down Henry Street, right on A Street, up to Parade where she took another right, and down to River Road where he had her pull over. The spot was nice, so she did. They got out and Joey led her down a path leading to the river.

"Here it is," he said.

She looked around, but didn't see any horses. Maybe he was pretending. Was she supposed to go along with him?

"I see," she said, smiling. "And which horse do you want to ride?"

"There aren't any horses here now, silly," he said.

"Of course not. But when they get here . . ."

"I don't know if they're coming."

"Joey, do you even know where we are?"

"Uh-huh." He nodded and looked around again. "This is where the horses are. They used to be."

Liz spotted a wooden sign about fifty feet from where she was and moved toward it until she could read the faded words painted across it.

"Horse Rides. $5.00 Adults. $3.00 Children. No One Under 5. Children 5-12 Must Ride With An Adult."

How the h.e.l.l did he know this was here?

The sign was old and alone. If there'd been a business here before, it was gone now. She scanned the area, looking for anything at all. There was the river, there was the sign, and there was the impression of an old trail. Weeds grew in patches across it, but the trail was clearly marked. Old trails are hard to erase.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," she said under her breath.

Joey stood back, watching the river. The sun was bright this early, but the overnight damp hadn't burned off yet. From here the river was black, but the closer she moved, the greener it got until, standing next to the water, it was the color of old toilet water. She couldn't imagine ever swimming in this, let alone eating anything caught in these waters.

"Tell you what," she said. "Let's go to the park instead, huh?"

"I don't want to go to the park."

"Then we'll find something else to do. It's too nice a day to ruin looking at some nasty old river water."

"But the horses used to be here," Joey said.

Liz nodded, wiped her hair back from her forehead and said, "Yeah, it looks like they sure did. I don't know how you knew that, but I'd say there used to be horses here."

"I don't remember," he said. He stared into the water. Liz looked into it too for a second before breaking its spell and taking Joey back to the car.

Jack closed down his computer, clocked out, and waited outside for Liz. From the Fett Technologies front steps, he could see across Ellison Drive to what The Outsider's Guide to Angel Hill called Splatter Mountain.

She pulled up in front of him, he climbed in, and they went home.

In the car, Jack mentioned to her going to Charley Clark's this Sat.u.r.day to play guitar with him for awhile.

At home, Joey went to his room to drag out as many toys as he thought he might need. While he did that, Liz told Jack about the horses and the trail rides that weren't there anymore, but used to be, and had Jack taken him there already, otherwise how did Joey know it was there?

"He's only six," she said. "He shouldn't know anything more about where he lives than what's across the street." She turned on the oven.

"Maybe he saw it on the news," Jack said.

"Doesn't explain how he knew exactly how to get there." She got out a cookie sheet.

"So maybe he's a genius. What are you getting at anyway? So he found a trail ride--that's not even there anymore, so technically he didn't find it--there's lots of old stuff in this house. Maybe he found an old map of things to do around Angel Hill." Jack took a bag of frozen French fries and a bag of frozen chicken nuggets from the freezer.

"You're determined to explain this away, aren't you?" she asked. She took the chicken and fries from him and dumped them onto the cookie sheet.

"That's because there is an explanation. Did you think to ask him?"

"Of course. You know what he said? 'I don't remember.'" She put the food in the oven, then went to the living room, leaving Jack to figure out how Joey found the trail ride, if he was so f.u.c.king smart.

Chapter Ten.

Days pa.s.sed--and more importantly, nights pa.s.sed--without incident. Liz had begun to convince herself she'd dreamed the cold night and the hands on her and the music. On Sat.u.r.day, Jack took his guitar and his amp and went to Charley's. Liz took another day off working upstairs and cleaned the first floor. She'd given up asking Joey about the trail ride, deciding he either really didn't know, or he just wasn't going to tell her.

She was making their bed, shoving the blanket between the sheets, when her fingers. .h.i.t Jack's book. She pulled it out, turned it over, wondering what it was, how it got there.

The Outsider's Guide to Angel Hill.

She opened the book and leafed through it, scanning the pictures, the chapters. She stopped on a chapter called, "The Story of Nin Park."

(from The Outsider's Guide to Angel Hill, chapter 12): The story of Nin Park is not one often retold in Angel Hill; everyone knows it and no one wants to repeat it.

Originally, Nigel Naas had purchased the land eventually occupied by Nin Park. He kept his land closely guarded against any intruders and was alleged to have killed and disposed of his share of trespa.s.sers.

Then there was the inevitable daring one who "lived to tell" about the other side of Nigel Naas's property line.

It wasn't long before tales of a large gla.s.s conservatory with stained gla.s.s designs around the top and six-foot weeds, thorn bushes, birds flying around inside with the rotting carca.s.ses of large animals littering the floor. A towering sculpture made entirely from butcher knife blades, some gleaming new, some blood-tinted with rust, stood a short distance from the animals, and further on a fountain sprayed red-dyed water. The statue in the center of the fountain had been a mule-headed monster whose body was that of a lion-man half-breed. The red water shot from the thing's eye sockets onto the carved bodies of three mangled cherubs at its feet.

Not long after the stories began spreading through town, pressure from those disgusted by the tale had the police knocking on Nigel Naas's door, demanding to be let onto his property, search warrant in hand. A high stone wall surrounded the land and the only way through was Nigel's back door. When Nigel didn't answer after ten minutes of knocking, the door was broken down and a small squad of armed officers stepped into "the worst smelling, the darkest, the dirtiest s.h.i.thole" they'd seen.

The house was empty. Nigel was gone. Thousands of items were confiscated. Weapons, bloodstained knives, torture devices. While no bodies were ever found on the property, the blood on the knives proved to be human. Police spent a full day searching, doc.u.menting, dissecting the house before they found the bas.e.m.e.nt, and Nigel.

The bas.e.m.e.nt had been transformed into a place of h.e.l.lish worship. The altar, which Nigel constructed in the shape of a huge, erect phallus (the shaft turned out to contain a hollow tube, two inches in diameter, and filled to its five-foot top with drying, yellow s.e.m.e.n. Whose was never discovered, but it wasn't Nigel's; scar tissue showed he'd emasculated himself years earlier), had more blades from the butcher knife sculpture sticking out all up its length, some coated with dried blood. Dry pools of candle wax covered the floor, their wicks long spent. Symbols formed a strange pattern of demon worship around the walls. Nigel was found in the middle of the floor, lying on a horizontal wooden cross. Nailed to it, actually, through both hands and feet. How he got there, who did the nailing, and whether he'd died from this or from the shattered spine couldn't be determined with one hundred percent certainty. Nor is it a.s.sumed anyone will ever decide to take up the search for the truth.

Nigel Naas was dead and, with no will to be found, soon every sacrilegious thing on his property was destroyed in a ma.s.s razing.

The property was turned over to the city of Angel Hill and renamed Nin Park. In an effort to turn the land's reputation around, the park was decorated with statues and fountains again, this time depicting victorious angels wielding swords as if ready to battle the evil, should it ever again appear in Nin Park.

The house was destroyed and a paved entrance was added with a large stone dragon at the front, as if to guard the park, holding a large marble globe in two upturned hands.